Anton Loibl GmbH
Anton Loibl GmbH was a company owned by the SS which was a funding source for the Ahnenerbe research branch and the Lebensborn eugenics programme. It was created to market a bicycle reflector invented by Anton Loibl, a chauffeur for Hitler. It employed slave labour. Anton Loibl, a former long-term chauffeur for Hitler and a decorated SS-Hauptsturmführer (Ernst Röhm had obtained the driver's job for him in the early 1920s, and he had spent time in prison after participating in the Beerhall Putsch in 1923),Hermann Kaienburg, Die Wirtschaft der SS, Berlin: Metropol, 2003, ISBN 9783936411041, p. 199, was a part-time inventor; while working as a machinist and driving instructor, he invented a reflector for bicycle pedals which incorporated glass chips.Enno Georg, Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der SS, Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 7, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1963, , p. 19 Heather Pringle, The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust, New York: Hyperion, 2006, ISBN 9780786868865, n.p. Heinrich Himmler, who was acquainted with Loibl, ensured that he was awarded the patent in preference to an earlier applicant, and the company was established in September 1936 in Berlin by Himmler's Personal Office in order to market it.Michael Thad Allen, The Business Of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, And The Concentration Camps, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2002, ISBN 9780807826775, pp. 34–35. In his capacity as police chief of the Reich, Himmler had a requirement added to the traffic code on 13 November 1937 which required all newly manufactured bicycles to incorporate these reflectors."SS-Konzern: Pfeffer aus Dachau", Der Spiegel, 25 December 1963, pp. 30–32 (pdf) The bicycle manufacturers had to pay a licence fee, which amounted to 600,000 Reichsmarks in 1939. Loibl was initially a co-director and co-owner of the company, and received 50% of the income, altogether approximately 500,000 RM; he was removed for incompetence at the end of 1939 or early in 1940.Kaienburg, p. 494. (An internal report dated June 1939 pointed out Himmler's use of his power for the benefit of the company and criticised Loibl's personally profiting from it.Walter Naasner, ed., SS-Wirtschaft und SS-Verwaltung: das SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt und die unter seiner Dienstaufsicht stehenden wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen: und weitere Dokumente, Schriften des Bundesarchivs 45a, Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998, ISBN 9783770016037, p. 271 ) Additionally, Himmler directed the company to pay substantial sums (290,000 RM a year) to the Ahnenerbe and the Lebensborn; financing these had been the primary purpose of its establishment. The Ahnenerbe had chronic financing problems for some years and in 1937 the Reichsnährstand had reduced its funding and Himmler set up a foundation to channel funds to it, including from the Loibl concern.Michael Kater, Das "Ahnenerbe" der SS 1935–1945: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches, Studien zur Zeitgeschichte, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1974, ISBN 9783421016232, p. 59. The Ahnenerbe's share of the Loibl funds was 77,740 RM in 1938; the Lebensborn received from 100,000 to 150,000 per year from 1939 on.Volker Koop, "Dem Führer ein Kind schenken": die SS-Organisation Lebensborn e.V., Cologne: Böhlau, 2007, ISBN 9783412216061, p. 72 At the Nuremberg Trials the Loibl company was described as "still earning considerable funds for 'Ahnenerbe'".Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council law no. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946–April, 1949 Volume V Case 8: U.S. v. Greifelt (cont.) Case 4: U.S. v. Pohl (Pohl case), Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 1950, , p. 532. Chartered to develop "technical articles of all kinds",Michael Thad Allen, "The Business of Genocide: the SS, Slavery, and the Concentration Camps", in: Business and Industry in Nazi Germany, ed. Francis R. Nicosia and Jonathan Huener, University of Vermont, Center for Holocaust Studies, New York: Berghahn, 2004, ISBN 9781571816542, pp. 81–103, p. 85. the company later diversified and also sold other products, such as a patented lamp. By the end of the 1930s, when Germany had achieved full employment, the SS enterprises were using slave labour, including from concentration camps.Allen, "The Business of Genocide" in Business and Industry in Nazi Germany, p. 87. In January 1938, Loibl showed a visitor around a testing laboratory for aircraft motors at Dachau.Franz Wegener, Der Alchemist Franz Tausend: Alchemie und Nationalsozialismus, Politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus 6, Gladbeck: KFVR, 2006, ISBN 9783931300180, p. 142 the reflectors were still required on German bicycles. References Category:Nazi SS Category:Companies established in 1936 Loibl, Anton